With his victory at Circuit of the Americas on Sunday (March 2), Christopher Bell scored back-to-back wins for the first time in his NASCAR Cup Series career.
Why is that notable? Because it’s been a long, long time since a driver last won multiple races in a row.
Fifty-two races, to be exact — the longest streak without back-to-back winners in Cup history.
Chris Buescher was last driver before Bell to record back-to-back wins, with two in a row at Richmond Raceway and Michigan International Speedway in August 2023. The 2024 season came and went without a single driver winning two straight — the first such season in the 21st century — only for Bell to end the drought three races into 2025.
Bell became the fourth driver in the Next Gen car to score back-to-back wins, joining Kevin Harvick (2022), William Byron (2023) and Buescher.
If it feels underwhelming to have just four sets of back-to-back wins in more than 3 years, it is. In 2021 — the final year of the Gen 6 car — Ryan Blaney recorded back-to-back wins while Kyle Larson recorded three consecutive wins (a hat trick) on two occasions.
Larson became the first Cup driver to have multiple hat tricks in a single season since Dale Earnhardt in 1987, and if it wasn’t for a pesky tire at Pocono Raceway, Larson would’ve had the first four-in-a-row streak since Jimmie Johnson in 2007.
The 2008 season saw six sets of back-to-back wins, while 2007 saw five back-to-backs in addition to Johnson’s four in a row. The 2018 season was notable for having three hat tricks from three separate drivers (Harvick, Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski), and every year from 2014 to 2021 saw at least two multi-win streaks through the course of a season.
From 2000 to 2021, only two seasons (2003 and 2013) saw just a single pair of back-to-back wins. The Next Gen era has “equaled” that mark in just a seventh of the time, with one back-to-back streak in 2022 and zero back-to-backs in 2024.
With the Next Gen car now entering its fourth year, the time of drivers experiencing prolonged weeks of dominance feels like a distant memory. Less than a handful of drivers have scored two straight wins in the current car, and no one has come close to three.
But if there’s a time for someone to buck the trend, it’s now.
Up next is Phoenix Raceway — the same track where Bell won in March and led the most laps in November. He will enter this Sunday (March 9) as one of the favorites, if not the outright favorite to win again.
The return of the option tire will throw a curveball for the teams and drivers at Phoenix, but all eyes will be focused on the No. 20 car and Bell’s quest for three in a row. And if he’s able to pull it off, he’ll run away from the competition with a massive lead in playoff points and establish himself as the early championship favorite.
Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly column is “Stat Sheet,” and he formerly wrote "4 Burning Questions" for three years. He also writes commentaries, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.
Find Stephen on Twitter @stephen_stumpf